TIA-controlled camera (FEI Eagle)¶

Extra Package and Installation¶

program/package	notes
Tia.dll	(Should come with the microscope)

Program	package web site	local copy of win32 installer
comtypes 0.6.2	http://sourceforge.net/projects/comtypes"	comtypes-0.6.2.win32.exe

Comtypes installation¶

THIS INSTRUCTION IS FOR comtypes 0.6.2. If you install newer version, this may not work.¶

Double click on the installer¶

Modify comtypes¶

IMPORTANT: After installing comtypes, you must make one modification to it. The module "safearray.py" that comes with comtypes must be replaced with a modified version that we provide. You can find the custom version of safearray.py in the pyscope package. Please copy this module from pyscope into the installed comtypes folder: C:\Python2*\Lib\site-packages\comtypes\. It should replace the safearray.py that is included in comtypes.

Remove safearray.pyc in C:\Python2*\Lib\site-packages\comtypes\ if it does not appear to recompile (timestamp of the file change) when you import comtype in python command line

import comtypes

Run checkcom.py¶

• From a command line window:
  

  cd C:\python27\Lib\site-packages\pyscope
  C:\python27\python.exe checkcom.py

The module it finds depends on the module.

You should have

TIA or ESVision

instruments.cfg¶

Eagle:

[camera]
class: tia.TIA_Eagle
zplane: 50
height: 4096
width: 4096

Setup¶

• Set camera configuration to give the standard Leginon orientation.

Programs to open before Leginon Client: TIA.¶

Testing with pyscope¶

In python command

form pyscope import tia
g = tia.TIA_Eagle()
g.setExposureTime(200)
g.getImage()

You should expect these to run without error. The getImage() command should give a 2D numpy array like

array([[1000, 3400, 2300, ..., 1000,1200,3000],
         [1000, 3400, 2300, ..., 1000,1200,3000],
         [1000, 3400, 2300, ..., 1000,1200,3000],
         ...,
         [1000, 3400, 2300, ..., 1000,1200,3000],
         [1000, 3400, 2300, ..., 1000,1200,3000],
         [1000, 3400, 2300, ..., 1000,1200,3000],dtype=int16)

The number and dtype depends on the camera.

a.shape command should give a tuple of the camera dimension matching your camera.
For example, (4096,4096)

If you use python shell to do this test, some of the error will cause the shell window to close immediately. Use Python IDLE instead in that case

Trouble shooting¶

Some version of TIA may give an error of that at the end of it says

_ctypes.COMError: (-2147352567, 'Exception occurred.', (u"Camera 'tia' does not exist.''.u'ESVision', None, 0L, 0))

This happens because TIA scripting (ESVision) knows the camera by a different name.

The correct name may be in TUI/CCDCamera panel. Or you can find out from these python commands when the camera in question is active (You can make it active by acquire an image in TIA).

from pyscope import tia
t = tia.get_tiaccd()
c = t.ccd.Camera

You should get the camera name as the output.

With the name, edit pyscope/tia.py and change in the class TIA_Eagle,
from

    camera_name='BM-Eagle'

to

    camera_name='THE NAME YOU FOUND'